Like our founding fathers, there are certain truths which I hold
self-evident. You know, simple truths like "we have an inalienable
right to liberty," and "any dish with sour cream in it will taste
pretty good," and "Jessica Alba is smokin' hot." In fact, my
self-evident truths are not that different from those of the founding
fathers. They had no way to know about Jessica Alba, but all of them
were known to cast lustful eyes at Dolly Madison, especially that
rapscallion Jefferson. What the hell do you think they meant by "the
pursuit of happiness"?

One of my self-evident
truths is that comedy is as worthwhile as drama or tragedy. Write down
why you think art is important. When you are satisfied with your
definition, you will see that it applies to comedy and drama equally.
You might have written, for example, "it offers us insight into the
human condition," or "it entertains us," or "it allows us to
understand others better." No matter what you have on your list, there
is no reason why comedy cannot do it just as well as drama. Taking the
point a step farther, you might even argue that comedy is even more
worthwhile than drama, since (1) making people laugh makes them feel
good, and that's a positive contribution to humanity (2) many doctors
contend that laughter is therapeutic in many ways and for many
conditions.

Furthermore, a universally
praised comedy is more of an achievement than its tragic or dramatic
equivalent because it is more difficult to make people laugh than cry.
Hell, it's easy to provoke tears. Show children being brutalized. Show
people dying needlessly, before their time. Show a faithful dog
waiting patiently for a gentle and beloved master who will never
return. 100% effective.

Dying is easy.

Comedy is hard.

The tragedy formulas work on everyone, so it is possible to create a
drama with nearly universal appeal. The faithful dog trick works on
everyone from Hitler to Mother Theresa. Not so with comedy. Because
there is no universal formula comparable to the tragedy rules, it is
difficult to make comedies with universal appeal. The ability of a
comic to turn jokes into laughter is contingent on the preconceptions
of the listeners. Ask Mort Sahl, whose job was to ridicule those in
power. He was feted as the funniest man in the world when Eisenhower
was in power, then was relegated to smoky half-empty nightclubs when
his job became to make pointed barbs about JFK. Ask Dennis Miller,
universally regarded as one of the greatest comic minds in history
until he turned his sharp barbs at liberal America. Sahl and Miller
didn't stop
being funny, but their core audiences stopped laughing. A comic has to
tailor his material in order to get laughs, and he had better know his
audience. The ethnic jokes - no matter how brilliant - will be booed
by the PC nutburgers. The sex jokes will be poo-pooed by the religious
nutburgers. And don't plan on a career in comedy if you're planning to
use your wit against liberals. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, who
love to rail against stupidity on both sides of the aisle, actually
get catcalls from the audience when they use their wit to make even
the most obvious points which contradict the liberal
canon - for daring to notice that Rosa Parks has been wildly overrated
by history, or that John Kerry is a stiff-ass douchebag. Stewart and
Colbert are
funny and sophisticated men, but their audience just wants more
Bush=chimp jokes.

Which brings us to
award season. It is reasonably easy to obtain consensus on the
effectiveness of dramas, but next to impossible to get people to agree
on comedies, so the awards always follow the path of least resistance.
Deep Throat advised Woodstein to "follow the money," but that only
works in politics. When it comes to movie awards, the resident nabobs
almost never follow the money, because the money follows comedies and
fantasies, and the elders of the cinema church simply don't consider
those worthy. (They finally had to break down and award Return of the
King when it became obvious that they'd look like complete fools if
they ignored one of the supreme achievements in the history of cinema,
but I don't believe they will ever award a true comedy, no matter how
good it is.)

When was the last time that
a comedy won Best Picture? No, I don't mean one of those
character-based films like Tootsie, or a musical comedy like Chicago,
but a comedy that actually makes people laugh. Where are the
Farrelly's Oscars for There's Something About Mary and Dumb and
Dumber? Where are Groucho's Oscars for Duck Soup? Where is Leslie
Nielsen's Oscar for playing Frank Drebin in Police Story? Where are
the Oscars for those guys who wrote Airplane?

They must be in the mail.

Mel Brooks does have a screenwriting Oscar for
The Producers and Woody Allen has two, including one for Annie Hall,
which also won him Best Director. Woody is just about the only comedy
writer who doesn't get the door shut in his face by the H'wood
establishment. He has something like 13 "best original screenplay"
nominations, including some for mediocre movies. (Alice??)

The British, to their eternal credit, do a much
better job of recognizing comedy. They do not treat comedy writers as
equals, but they do occasionally let them sit with the adults. In
1994, they gave the original screenplay BAFTA to Harold Ramis and
Danny Rubin for Groundhog Day, as they well should have, over The
Piano and In the Line of Fire. Groundhog Day was not even nominated
for an Oscar! In 1997 the Brits gave the Best Picture award to The
Full Monty over Titanic. I'm not sure that I support that decision,
but the point is that at least they were inviting comedy to sit at the
big boy table. (For the record, the Brits have been more accepting of
fantasy films and other genre movies as well, awarding Best Picture
awards to The Fellowship of the Ring and The Usual Suspects in years
when the Yanks were honoring A Beautiful Mind and Braveheart.)

Which finally brings us back to The 40-Year-Old
Virgin. Let us imagine a different world. It is one in which comedies
are treated as equals and therefore receive at least half of the Oscar
nominations. Our perfect imaginary world also includes a filter that prevents tragedies or dramas
with a few funny lines from stealing any of the comedy nominations,
which are reserved only for pure comedies. In
such a world, The 40-Year-Old Virgin would be nominated for Best
Picture. It is not only a very funny movie, but it is also involving,
and tremendously perceptive about human relationships. It is one of
the year's two funniest comedies (with Wedding Crashers); it is also one of the
two best overall movies among the comedy entries (with Wallace and Gromit); and is the only film which is a shoo-in for both
the "funniest comedy" and "best overall comedy film" lists. My two younger kids are big movie buffs. My 21-year-old son
opines that this is the best comedy film of the year, although perhaps
not as funny
as Wedding Crashers. My 19-year-old daughter says it is the funniest
film of the year, period. Viewed from just about any perspective, it is the best comedy of the year, which would
automatically earn an Oscar nomination in a good and just world.

The film provided Steve Carell with a chance to
to come off the comedy bench and become a star. He stepped up and
slugged it out of the park, but in a very unassuming way. Carell is not a
crazy scene-stealer like Carrey or Ferrell or Vaughn, and he got very few
opportunities to be funny in
any obvious way. He just delivered his lines within his naive character and trusted
the material. Fundamentally, he played the
Mary Tyler Moore role in an ensemble comedy. That was the right choice,
and some good acting as well. He
kept the entire part well within the limits of credibility. If you watch
this movie, you will never doubt for a minute that he really is a
virgin.

The basic plot is that three rowdy retail
workers
find out that their 40-year-old colleague is a virgin, so they
resolve to get him laid. Various well-intentioned but stupid attempts fail for various reasons,
but our hero does eventually find a girl on his own. Unfortunately, he
is too timid to have sex with her because he has no idea what he's
doing, and he's too intimidated to admit his virginal status. That's
about all there is to it. Pure and simple premise. The brilliance is
in the execution, the balls-to-the-wall humor, and the empathy we
establish for the characters.

I liked
the DVD extras just as much as I liked the film itself. Basically,
there isn't a bad minute anywhere. The deleted scenes and outtakes are
just as funny as the material that made it into the film. The scenes weren't deleted
because they stunk, but for one of
two reasons: (1) in some scenes, the guys improvised a lot of
different jokes and it wouldn't make sense to keep more than one; (2) in other cases, the material was too naughty or the
lines were too hard to understand. The full-length commentary is also
funny, and even some of the completely unrelated material (Seth
Rogan's "My Dinner With Stormy") is a hoot!

DVD INFO

Unrated version is 17 minutes longer

Many deleted Scenes (with Optional
Commentaries)

Featurette "Filming the Waxing Scene"

Featurette: "My Dinner with Stormy"

Outtakes/Gag Reel

Feature Commentary with Co-Writers Judd
Apatow and Steve Carell (who are also the director and star,
respectively)

NUDITY REPORT

Kimberly Page - one nipple

Catherine Keener - one nipple
in the deleted material only

Stormy Daniels -
breasts in the unrated film, full frontal nudity in the
deleted scenes

Box Office Mojo. It
was a hit. The opening weekend was only $21 million, but
word-of mouth was great, and the next two weeks dipped only
24% and 18% respectively. Final total: $109 million. The
budget was $26 million, so it was a big money-maker. It did
not prove as popular overseas, with about $58 million in
foreign grosses.

The meaning of the IMDb
score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics,
or a C- from our system.
Films rated below five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one
and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is.

My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but
will be considered excellent by genre fans, while
C- indicates that it we found it to
be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for
fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is
recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C-
that often, because we like movies and we think that most of
them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know
that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below
C-.

Based on this description, it's
a B-, a
film with such a warm heart and such genuine insights that it
won over many who could easily have been offended by its raunchy
humor. One of the rare pictures which is popular with both
critics and mainstream audiences.